A sprawling national black-market for renting and selling DoorDash accounts has quietly become one of the most widespread and least acknowledged gig-economy abuses in the country. With similar patterns now emerging in Maine, the issue is raising new questions about safety, accountability, and whether delivery apps have any meaningful control over who is showing up at residents’ front doors.
Across the United States, a shadow industry has taken shape in which verified DoorDash, Uber Eats, Instacart, and rideshare accounts are leased to unvetted workers for monthly fees. Investigators have identified dozens of large social-media groups, some topping tens of thousands of members, where accounts are openly advertised for rent or purchase.
A national watchdog report by Tech Transparency Project (TTP) found nearly 80 Facebook groups with more than 800,000 combined members trading accounts, posting prices, and offering “customer support” for renters. In some listings, DoorDash accounts were advertised “for sale for $430” or “for rent at $115 every 30 days.” In other regions, renters routinely pay $300–$500 per month simply to access an active account.
The account owners are individuals who passed background checks, license verification, and identity screening collect recurring payments. The renters are often people who cannot pass those checks or lack proper documentation, but want access to quick income. The result is a parallel labor market operating entirely outside the platform’s safety and vetting systems.
This underground economy has become so large that it now affects workers, customers, restaurants, and the platforms themselves. The risks associated with this are multiple.
First, customers lose assurance of who is actually making deliveries, since the person at their door may not be the vetted account holder. Then, restaurants struggle to verify pickups, widening the risk of fraud and incorrect deliveries. Troublingly, legitimate gig workers see their earnings squeezed, competing with renters who work at lower rates just to cover their monthly account fees.
In addition, platforms face mounting fraud, identity based abuses, and reputational damage. Also, insurance and liability systems break down when the person driving, the person on the account, and the person whose documents were submitted are all different people. In short, a pandora’s box of potential problems is opened by this subterfuge.
The scale has prompted delivery companies to tighten security. DoorDash has expanded ID verification systems and increased automated fraud detection. But enforcement remains inconsistent across the country, and the black-market economy continues to flourish on social-media platforms with no real deterrence.
Everything that allowed the account rental market to explode nationwide exists in Maine today:
A surge in gig-delivery activity, labor shortages, new residents seeking immediate income, and widespread access to the same online groups where these transactions occur.
Portland, Lewiston, Auburn, Bangor, and Biddeford have all seen rapid expansion of app-based delivery services. Maine residents can join national account-rental groups with a single click. Because the exchange is digital and decentralized, the trade moves across state lines effortlessly.
Maine has not announced high-profile cases involving fraudulent account rentals, but that is exactly how the issue unfolded in other states. Most regions only discovered the problem after individual incidents surfaced. Analysts tracking gig-fraud trends warn that the absence of public documentation does not mean the activity isn’t happening; it means it isn’t being caught.
The scheme thrives because it is profitable, difficult to track, and reinforced by social-media platforms that provide the infrastructure. Account owners cash monthly rental fees. Renters get access to work. Platforms struggle to identify who is actually completing orders. And local governments have almost no visibility into who is operating in their communities.
For Maine, the implications are the same as those playing out across the country.
Unknown individuals making deliveries, weakened safety systems, unfair competition for local workers, and an unregulated black-market labor system growing alongside legitimate commerce.
As gig-economy services continue to expand, Maine officials and the companies themselves may eventually be forced to confront the question already raised in larger states: Do these platforms actually know who is delivering food to Maine households?
